Exactly one year ago today, Tyler and I joined forces to create simple, pick-up-and-play games for modern touch platforms. We christened our effort “Backabit”  (Tyler’s mom came up with the name) because of our fondness for timeless, old-school gameplay.

To celebrate how far we’ve come, we want to give something back to you. For a short time, we’re giving away Ramps for iPhone. Seriously, take a look… it’s 100% free.

If you’ve already got a copy, thank you so much! This wouldn’t be possible without your support. Now’s your chance to gift a copy to friends, family, even your dog!

We’re cooking up some big plans we hope to announce in the coming weeks. Stay tuned to this blog or follow us on Twitter to keep in the loop.

We love surprises, it’s one of our favorite parts about making games.

That said, we don’t want anyone to miss out on what we’ve got planned. Make sure you check back this way tomorrow.

You won’t be sorry!

Tyler and I recently participated in an episode of the Friends Electric Podcast that was posted earlier today. If you’re interested in hearing more about how we created Ramps, the story of how Backabit came to be, and some tidbits regarding what we’ve got in-store for the upcoming release of Ramps HD, this is an interview you won’t want to miss!

We’re also excited today as we’ve released an update to Ramps to the App Store to address several bugs we discovered related to version 1.1. In addition, Ramps 1.1.1 now supports multi-touch! Yep, we should have supported multi-touch from the very beginning, but we didn’t want to release this capability until we got it just right. Now, you can use as many fingers as you can fit on your iPhone or iPod Touch (the answer is five) to move your ramps around and send Superball flying into the air!

Hope everyone is having a fantastic Thursday!

After several long months of crafting, polishing and fine-tuning,  Ramps 1.1 is finally released into the wild. We couldn’t be more excited!

Once you update Ramps from the App Store, you’ll find 100 new levels containing 300 new challenges, nine achievements, two new leaderboards and six unlockable balls! We even have two new tracks from Essa… they’re riffs on his previous light world compositions and they sound amazing!

We’ve heard from some players that they wanted more challenging levels to conquer. Inspired by one of our favorite Super Meat Boy design elements, we decided to create alternate dark worlds to compliment the existing light worlds. These new versions of the 100 original levels contain new challenges and gameplay mechanics we think you’ll really dig!

We didn’t just add new content, though—we also added Superball!

Superball can grab some extra air time while becoming invulnerable to whatever baddies may stand in its way. This only lasts a short time, and can only be used once per ball, so make sure you use your Superball juice wisely. Transforming into Superball is easy: just tap and hold anywhere on the screen!

Doing a major update also gave us a chance to catch up on some housekeeping. We improved the usability of several aspects of the game. For example, when you are in a scrollable level, there’s now a GO! button that travels with you as you scroll, so you never have to scroll back to the dispenser to spawn a new ball. If that ball dies, you’ll snap right back to where you left off.

We also redesigned the help screens to be simpler and easier to scale. As we add even more cool stuff, it will be a lot easier for us to show you how it works, and quicker for you to get back to the action!

Oh yeah, one more thing…

Buried deep within Ramps, where only the most skilled players can find them (Hint: you’ve gotta complete everything), there are unlockable tributes to two of our favorite iOS games: The Incident and Wispin! The developers of these fine titles were gracious enough to give us permission to pay homage to their characters. We continue to admire and be inspired by their contributions to touch gaming.

We’re so excited about our new release and we really hope you enjoy all the new content. Soon, we’ll have another big announcement for you regarding our plans for a… ahem… larger screen.

Enjoy!

And.. one more one more thing…

For just a few short days, we are offering Ramps on sale for just $.99! Now is a fantastic time to check it out!

I just checked our analytics this morning, and noticed that we passed the one millionth game played in just under three months of being on the App Store. We have now surpassed the number of times the original Ramps for Flash was played in its three years of life on the web, and that version was free!

Thank you friends for playing our game, for continuing to play it, and for loving it as much as we do.

We have so much more in store for you this year, and can’t wait to share more!